Bernhardt Lab
Aquatic–Terrestrial Biogeochemistry
The Bernhardt Lab works across forests, floodplains, wetlands, and streams to understand elemental cycling, and how human activity is changing it.
What we ask
01
How do ecosystems retain and transform elements and energy?
02
How is the answer to Q1 changing as a result of human activities?
How we think about it
From the lab's research statement — full text on the Research page.
Our species has become extraordinarily good at liberating, fixing, transporting, concentrating, and redistributing elements. Modern economies depend on moving nutrients, metals, and synthetic compounds through the environment at enormous rates. The diversity of synthetic chemicals now present in soils, rivers, and sediments has increased rapidly over the past century, and in many places these compounds are interacting with ecosystems in ways we still poorly understand.
Biogeochemical activity in ecosystems is rarely evenly distributed across space or time. Instead, many processes occur at especially high rates within small features or brief windows in time. These locations and moments — often referred to as ecosystem control points — can have disproportionate influence on ecosystem function.
Another long-standing theme of our work is the tight coupling between carbon (~energy) and nutrient cycles. Many of the most interesting questions in ecosystem biogeochemistry arise when we consider multiple elements simultaneously rather than treating carbon, nitrogen, or phosphorus in isolation.
The influence of any landscape patch on downstream ecosystems depends strongly on its position within the watershed and its hydrologic connectivity with other patches. Disturbances that alter the supply or form of biologically important elements, therefore, tend to propagate along hydrologic flow paths.
A welcoming, productive group
Since 2004, nearly 70 students, postdocs, and research technicians have come through the lab. Most have gone on to lead their own labs, agencies, and research programs — several of whom co-authored the tribute this quote is drawn from.
"We take our science seriously, we take ourselves… less so."
— caption on a set of lab photos spanning two decades, in Helton, Morse, Sudduth, Ardón, et al., Journal of Hydrology (2023)